


The ghost boyfriend

by Semicircles



Category: No Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23204284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semicircles/pseuds/Semicircles





	The ghost boyfriend

Julia has a new boyfriend: Marianne takes a sharp inhale of breath every time she brings him around. Marianne’s right hand reacts to this overwhelming feeling: when Marianne and her boyfriend go on double dates with them and Marianne’s boyfriend takes her hand in his, her hand starts to sweat, like it’s aware of a promise she isn’t keeping.  
Marianne falls in love easily. Her lust is a wild thing, needing room to fly, like a butterfly or a small, beautiful bird.  
Then, Julia and her boyfriend move in together and they host a housewarming party. Marianne wanders from room to room dreamily, hoping to bump into Julia’s boyfriend. And when she does and their eyes meet, at doorways or across the room, she holds eye contact like she believes the distance can be bridged with a stare.  
At some point the lightning is first hazy blue, then hazy purple, and everyone has gone away. They’re in the room just the two of them. I feel like you’re a mystery I can’t solve, she says. It’s difficult to breathe, when I’m around you. Her boyfriend is a thing she vaguely remembers existing outside of this moment.  
To her, this moment is all that really is.  
They look into each other’s eyes.  
Then they kiss.  
After the kiss, Julia and Julia’s boyfriend go on a vacation to a faraway country with with very tall mountains. On the downward slope of one of those mountains, their rental car drifts off like a milk tooth.  
When Marianne hears about their deaths, she cries. She buries her face in her boyfriend’s arm. At the funeral, she thinks about how she didn’t really know Julia’s boyfriend that well, or Julia, or anyone. She watches their relatives who are so shocked that they can’t even cry, and she thinks that death is a choreography she can't learn the steps to.

Marianne and her boyfriend go back home and things adjust to the way they were. They're comfortable. Her boyfriend kisses her in their kitchen, she has to reach tiptoes to kiss. He pets her when they watch television. She dreams about Julia’s boyfriend at night. In her dreams, she and him are free.  
And then: he starts to visit her.

x

It looks like she goes to movies alone but really she does not. It looks like she goes to restaurants alone but really she does not. The ghost boyfriend is always there.  
The ghost boyfriend looks exactly the same as he looked when he was living.  
The ghost boyfriend doesn’t pressure her to leave her living boyfriend for him. Well, what would she leave him for? But the ghost boyfriend is everywhere. When she loads the dishwasher, he is there, observing. When she goes to the gym, he accompanies her. They talk about everything and she feels a connection much stronger than she has with her boyfriend. Whatever they talk about, the subtext is always the same: what would we be together if we were together?  
When she goes to a restaurant with her real boyfriend she can’t focus on her real boyfriend with the ghost boyfriend in the same room. She holds the ghost boyfriend’s hand under the table and tries to hold a conversation with the real boyfriend at the same time, but her attention slips and swerves. The real boyfriend calls her ”distant”. To her, the ghost boyfriend is still a mystery. It feels like everything around her is swerving and she can’t find a fixed point.  
”Are you seeing someone else”, her boyfriend asks. ”Yes”, she says.  
He doesn’t say anything.  
”Do you want me to move out”, she says and hopes the answer is yes. She feels so tired, all the time.

A month later, her new apartment feels too big for her, like a baggy sweatshirt. She stands in the living room and thinks about how much this past year has changed her, how much she has learned. The ghost boyfriend moves in, too, and now, the ghost boyfriend and her have the whole house to themselves. They don’t have to hide anymore. He lies on top of her on the bed and bites her earlobe. Woo-hoo, she thinks excitedly. She whispers into his ear, now we can do whatever we want.  
They have sex in the bath tub, they have sex in the kitchen. The afterglow is so fucking glowy she's lit up even before they have sex. The old living boyfriend was boring, the new ghost boyfriend is great. The ghost boyfriend feels shiny and strong, like a brand new iPhone. She is constantly in a good mood, a vitamin D rush to the head, eternal early summer morning.  
But then -- he interrupts this joyful lovefest and gets boring. He says that they should buy a new dishwasher. She stands in the aisles and opens and closes her mouth exasperatedly, pointlessly, like a bored goldfish. The ghost boyfriend is actually real. What a disappointment. There is no mystery any more. He even looks dimmer to her now, less radiant. Her love is a wild thing that has been tamed.  
Then, another party, oh, look at this: a new guy. The new guy looks into her eyes and asks her out. The ghost boyfriend watches her on the other side of the room and dims out like an energy-saving lamp slowly losing energy. She shrugs and says, yeah, sure. Inside, she feels excitement, not unlike all the times previously, but also entirely new, but the newness feels the same as it has felt before.  
When she goes home with the ghost boyfriend things continue like they were before. She remembers liking the way every conversation was loaded with a question left unsaid: what if? Well, now the question has been answered.  
On Friday night, they stand in the living room when the doorbell rings. The new what-if-guy is at her doorstep, holding flowers. Marianne and the ghost boyfriend freeze and look at each other. The ghost boyfriend looks dimmer than ever before and says that the flowers, probably, smell beautiful; he says that she should go and accept them.


End file.
